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Thread: Roma kids
Well, for Romania, they are pretty light, but it isn't unheard of at all. Like I said elsewhere, my daughter looks about like that, hard to say from the photo, but under her clothes she's more tan and she doesn't get all pasty in the winter like I do. I'm sure if you put those kids next to some white white Europeans you could tell and that is where the societal tensions come in. People can tell. I mean how do different ethnic groups in Africa tell who belongs to which group? I lived in Zimbabwe for awhile and after a few months even I could tell who was Shona and who wasn't in a glance (and I'm legally blind :D ) and they're all just Africans to most white people. With my daughter, you don't really notice when you're just around her. Then, I see Czech children and they look all sickly and pale even to me. Roma appear in quite a range. I have seen a group of very dark Roma in Kosovo that had brilliantly blue eyes. I'm sure some of it comes from the wide geographical spread of the group. Intermarriage was taboo until very recently but it still happened, as well as less ahem... organized things. And some Roma have simply been very far north for nearly a thousand years and the sun starts wearing off. Central Europe is up north with Canada, not on the level of the US. All Hungarians used to be the color of Turks. Germans supposedly come from India, just a bit further back. Certainly, Roma who are lighter face less daily discrimination but it still happens through language, culture, one's address, last names and so forth. This is Eastern Europe. Remember how the Serbs and the Croats went to war and it is absolutely impossible to tell them apart? They speak exactly the same. They only write in different alphabets and go to different churches.
From my experience as a journalist in Romani communities that article was pretty accurate. Romani distrust of the education systems of the majority cultures they live in compounds the problems of discrimination. I am concerned as much about the self-esteem impact of negative media images coupled with rejection of adopted children by the Romani community, as I am about the Jim Crow of Czech society. All the negative media messages are one thing when a child knows the community but if that community rejects the child, it is hard to counteract the negative messages.
The Romani community has historically made contact with non-Romani people taboo as a means of self-defense. It has worked. Most cultures exposed to centuries of expulsion, slavery, forced separation of families, linguistic bans, outright murder and so forth, most eventually succumb and become assimilated, especially if they do not look wildly different. The Roma have retained their culture and language largely because of their taboos, but the modern-day shadows of those historical taboos also make it very difficult for Romani people, who for diverse reasons have been separated from the community, to regain their culture and language.